Giuliani: Don't Point Fingers for 9/11

NEW YORK – Laying blame for missed clues that could have signaled the Sept. 11 (search), 2001, attacks is "Monday morning quarterbacking," saysRudolph Giuliani (search), who was New York's mayor at the time.

"For any one thing to jump out, you almost have to know what's going to happen in the future," said Giuliani, who is to testify next month before the government commission investigating the terrorist attacks.

"And now, we do know what happened in the future. So if you see a document that says, `al-Qaida anything,' it's a lot more important than it was back then. Back then,Al Qaeda (search) fit into thousands of other pieces of information."

Giuliani spoke to The Associated Press in an interview Tuesday before a public appearance to announce a national men's health campaign. The one-time federal prosecutor became known as America's mayor after Sept. 11, leading the nation's biggest city from a makeshift emergency center on a Hudson River pier.

Giuliani said he had not seen or heard any intelligence that could have prompted the government to react differently than it did.

"When a horrible thing happens, then you go back and — with the benefit of hindsight — you see something three or four months earlier that alerted you to it," Giuliani said. "But, so far, I haven't seen anything that would have created that kind of alert."

He added that "the good things that'll come out of this are the things that tell us how to prevent it in the future."